Green Mission Blog #1

Green Mission Blog #1

Hi, I’m Emily, Boomtown’s sustainability coordinator!!

I’ve started this monthly blog to share our plans behind the scenes to keep you all updated on our journey as we urgently aim to reduce Boomtown’s environmental impact and increase positive action. It’s a continuous learning process as we explore new ideas, so I hope to share with you what we learn along the way and I look forward to us working together on this mission.

2018 has got us off to a successful start - we achieved the ‘commended’ award and 2/4 stars from A Greener Festival Award, 35% of our audience arrived via coach or train, we ran a new Bristol to Boomtown bike ride, 322 people used GoCarShare and we recycled and reused 40% of our total waste. Read here for more info.

We measured our carbon footprint for the first time in 2018 and worked out that Boomtown produced 1532 tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent of 277 return flights from London to Sydney (this doesn’t include emissions from production travel or food). This has given us baseline data to work from and enabled us to set a target to reduce our total CO2 emissions by 50% by 2025. This is keeping in line with the Festival Vision 2025 pledge and global climate change commitments.

To achieve this, we’re really excited to release our statement of Environmental Commitments, which outlines what measures we will take to reduce our environmental impact and here is a brief overview of what we’re doing so far.

The majority of Boomtown emissions are caused by travelling to and from the festival! This year we’ve made it even easier for everyone to arrive via green travel. It’s free on Wednesday for those arriving via coach, train, car share (3+ people) or bike and public transport saver tickets are cheaper than standard entry tickets. After the success of the Bristol to Boomtown bike ride, we’ve added a London to Boomtown cycle experience and those that use GoCarShare are in for a chance to win 2020 festival tickets.

I’ll be releasing more information about our initiatives and how you can get involved each month - next month’s blog will about our new eco camp (more info coming soon!).

In the meantime, do you have an idea or an innovation to help us on our environmental mission? If so we’d love to hear from you!! Please get in touch by emailing sustainability@boomtownfair.co.uk

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